United States

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Poor Jack. Life is slipping away from his control. He struggles with sobriety. His wife has found a new man, fifteen years younger. He takes an interest in another woman, but she doesn't exactly have him in her sights. So Jack does what any man would do. He finds escape in his new detective novel-wherein he is the main character. But soon, Jack must determine who is real: the people in his life or the characters in his book. Patrick Coyle is a triple-threat in the mesmerizing noir Detective Fiction as director, writer, and actor, adapting his stage play for the big screen.

Season:
2003
Director:
Patrick Coyle
Cinematography:
Gregory R. Winter
Cast:
Mo Collins, Patrick Coyle, Sarah Agnew, Brent Doyle
Editor:
Jeffrey Stickles
Producer:
Paul Johnson

Running time: N/A

Life for Finnigan Jones (Joe Aaron) has reached the point where the first thing he does every morning is wonder whether or not he should blow out his brains. Approaching 40 and still living with his mother, stricken with heavy depression and bouts of Tourette's Syndrome, he just muddles past the world. Then he meets Syd (Francesca Catalano), a 12-year-old whose personality is as bright as her green-dyed curls. Unlike other people, Syd simply accepts Jones for who he is. Sensing a kindred spirit in the young girl, he is able to get a new grip on life.

Season:
2003
Director:
Joe Aaron
Cinematography:
Brian J. Reynolds
Cast:
Joe Aaron, Francesca Catalano, Elizabeth Ince
Editor:
Margaret Guinee, Wilton Henderson
Producer:
Joe Aaron, Keith Coene

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One week every year, a virtual city is erected on the surface of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada: Black Rock City, population 29,000, otherwise known as Burning Man. Un Su Lee and Paul Barnett's Confessions of a Burning Man offers an original and intimate, yet widely appealing, view of the Burning Man event as seen through the eyes of four of our contemporaries. Samantha Weaver, clearly in her element, builds a labyrinth as a means to find her place and create her communal identity.

Season:
2003
Premiere status:
Sneak Premiere
Director:
Un Su Lee, Paul Barnett
Cinematography:
Jeffrey Chu, Un Su Lee
Editor:
Robbie Proctor
Producer:
Un Su Lee, Paul Barnett, Lily Ng, Curt Dowdy

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Alone in a room, in the still of night, an old scribbler begins work on a simple story.

Season:
2003
Director:
Kazuo Ohno

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How can a man commit petty crimes, elude the police of several states, and still get top honors at Princeton? How does such a man become a track star almost overnight without a single person knowing his crimes? And most important-why did he do it? Con Man is the story of James Hogue, an incredibly intelligent serial imposter who reinvented his identity repeatedly, always with an intriguing and fabricated past. Poised for stunning success at Princeton: he'd not only been admitted, but he attained a scholarship, top honors, and became a track star for the university.

Season:
2003
Director:
Jesse Moss
Cinematography:
Elia Lyssy, Tony Hardmon, Frank DeMarco
Editor:
Youna Kwak, Jesse Moss
Producer:
Jesse Moss
Executive Producer:
James Marsh, Liz Garbus, Rory Kennedy

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A wonderful short film that explores how the strength and hope possessed by everyone maintains a bright future, even under the harshest conditions.

Season:
2003
Director:
Mehrdad Farid

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Can a "20-year-old movie about a failed relationship" be someone's guide through life? It can if you're Max, a college student obsessed with Woody Allen's Annie Hall to the point of sabotaging his own dates if necessary. Sharing his time between a radio show to which nobody listens and hanging out with his romance-challenged colleagues, Max seems bound for bachelorhood. That is, until he meets beautiful Julie, who is nothing less than his favorite film in the flesh. Will he be able to reach out to her, or will he be trapped forever by his own neurosis?

Season:
2003
Premiere status:
World Premiere
Director:
Van Flesher
Cinematography:
Stephan Schultze
Cast:
Gary Lundy, Sara Downing, Kim Murphy, Brian Klugman, Jay Paulson, Todd Duffey, Rini Bell, Kathleen Perkins
Editor:
Jeff Orgill, Chryss Terry, Randy Mack
Producer:
Randy Mack

Running time: N/A

San Jose director Sung H. Kim artfully uses Bay Area locations to take us into the lives of three Asian/Pacific-American childhood friends at a time when they are each struggling with their separate identities and what, if anything, they wish to achieve with their lives. Blue is an Asian-American twenty-something coasting along in life: a bike messenger in San Francisco by day and working the counter at a cafe at night. His roommates and best friends are Michael, a Silicon Valley type yuppie, and Bounce, a professional student who is happy just to be stoned 24 hours a day.

Season:
2003
Director:
Sung H. Kim
Cinematography:
David Doko
Cast:
Michael Cheng, Mark Marking, Anna Laveria May, Joyce Thi Brew, Poppy Nguyen, Denice Lee, Samuel Sheng
Editor:
Kaoru Kim
Producer:
Sung H. Kim

Running time: N/A

A wonderful 3D animated look at the birth of a sprout-from the geniuses at PDI/Dreamworks

Season:
2003
Director:
Scott Peterson

Running time: N/A

Maija Di Giorgio was a comedian on the verge of big time success. Then one night in front of executives from HBO, she inexplicably cracked, shouting obscenities at the audience and walking off stage. Thus, her career as a stand-up was finished. So, Maija sets out on a two-year quest to find out what went wrong and to try to resurrect her dreams of making people laugh.

Season:
2003
Premiere status:
World Premiere
Director:
Maija Di Giorgio
Cinematography:
Jody Del Giorno
Cast:
Richard Belzer, George Carlin, Maija Di Giorgio, Whoopi Goldberg, Kenneth R. Sim
Editor:
Maija Di Giorgio
Producer:
Richard Belzer
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